This workshop is a part of the GhentCDH Digital Humanities Research Lab's Digitising the Humanities lecture & workshop series. Participation is free, registration is mandatory via this link.
Part I. Transcription is a ‘monk’s job’.
It is fundamental in our work to be able to work with handwritten texts, but transcription is time consuming, and thus we as researchers have to question the costs versus return. What if the computer could assist and take over this time consuming task?
Transkribus is an automated recognition, transcription platform that enables OCRed search in manuscripts. Starting from a sample of trained texts, a model is trained apply HTR (Handwriting Text Recognition) to the rest of your documents. This results in a Character Error Rate– by one hand –between 5 and 10%, meaning that the manuscript is correctly transcribed from 90 to 95%. It enables character recognition where you can identify specific keywords, using Transkribus’ keyword spotter, allowing you to go over your texts much quicker, map patterns and changes in texts across time.
Interested in learning more? Join us during the open Workshop on 5 November from 9 – 11.30am in Plateau Rozier, PClab 0.2. as is part of the English Literature Bachelor’s 3rd year course Digital Literary Studies.
Please register at the website to use Transkribus:
a. Go to: http://transkribus.eu/
b. Read our user agreement:
https://transkribus.eu/Transkribus/docs/TranskribusTermsOfUse_v04-2016.pdf
c. All documents uploaded to Transkribus are “private”, which means that no one
except you has access to them.
d. The Transkribus team fully supports all EU directives on data protection and privacy.
We will respect your privacy and only use the data to improve our services and
support research in humanities and computer science!
Part II. Optional hands-on session
In this optional hands-on session Dr. Romein will assist you in transcribing your own manuscripts. This is not in a PC lab thus you will need your own laptop in this session.
Please download Transkribus from the website:
a. Go to the Transkribus website http://transkribus.eu/ and click “Download”.
b. Transkribus runs on Windows, MacOS and Linux. If you need help installing the
platform, consult the Transkribus wiki:
https://transkribus.eu/wiki/index.php/Download_and_Installation
c. If you use MacOS an error message may appear when you try to open Transkribus for
the first time. To remedy this:
i. right click the Track Pad to open the Context Menu and add a security
exception for Transkribus.
d. Once you have downloaded Transkribus, make sure you unzip the file. The program
cannot be started from the zipped file!